Michael Furey's burial place is immortalised in the last lines of James Joyce's short story, 'The Dead'. Michael was Greta Conroy's first love and was the foil for her husband, Gabriel Conroy's jealousy in Joyce's beautifully poignant short story, which was the final story in his first published book of short stories, 'Dubliners'.
Later in her own autobiography, Nora Barnacle (James Joyce's wife), who lived at 4 Bowling Green, opposite St. Nicholas Church, mentioned her first teenage crush on a young Galway boy, Michael Bodkin, who died on the 11th February 1900 of 'consumption' or 'TB' in the Galway Fever Hospital, in what later became 'The Men's Club' in NUIG and is now the 'Centre for Global Women's Studies'.
Michael Bodkin is buried in the family vault Rahoon Cemetery and there is a plaque to this connection there, and Joyce's poem, 'She Weeps over Rahoon'. There was a plaque at Richardson's Pub on Eyre Square, beside which, in a small sweet shop on Prospect Hill, he had lived and where Nora visited him. He was older than her and probably blissfully aware of her interest in him, but nonetheless, Joyce personified this young love between Nora and Michael Bodkin in the strained relationship he so perfectly described in 'The Dead', between the fictionalised, but easily recognisable, Greta Conroy and Michael Joyce.
These final lines refer to a grave in Oughterard, where Nora's father was buried, having long been estranged from her mother in Bowling Green. Joyce loved the song 'The Lass of Aughrim', having heard Nora Barnacle's mum sing it in the little house on Bowling Greet in 1909, and that song, tellingly also appears in 'The Dead', so typical of Joyce to turn the knife, again and again. Have a listen to these last lines from 'The Dead', it's very short and very beautiful and James Joyce and Nora Barnacle's own relationship, and their relationship with Dublin, Galway and Ireland are resonated in every line.
The last Lines of 'The Dead' .... see https://youtu.be/A_-KlGCSCJE
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